24 Nov, 2024
1 min read

Why Candace Cameron Bure’s Eating Disorder Had *NOTHING* to Do With Playing D.J. Tanner – Cosmopolitan.com

Cosmopolitan.comWhy Candace Cameron Bure's Eating Disorder Had *NOTHING* to Do With Playing D.J. TannerCosmopolitan.comWhile some young actors may face pressure to be thin, and develop weight issues and eating disorders, that's not what happened to Bure. In fact, Full House wrapped up while she was in her teens, and her eating disorder surfaced during her early 20s.and more »

1 min read

Frequent social media use may lead to eating disorder – Firstpost

FirstpostFrequent social media use may lead to eating disorderFirstpostExcess use of social media such as Facebook, Instagram or YouTube may lead to disordered eating and body image concerns among young adults, suggests new research. Eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, binge eating disorder and other clinical …Frequent social media use may up eating disorder risk: studyDeccan HeraldIs Facebook damaging your confidence? Young adults who spend more time on social media struggle with their body …Daily MailThe Common Habit That Could Totally Warp Your Body ImageHealth.comI4U Newsall 8 news articles »

4 mins read

Sometimes fat is bliss

I’ve been re-visiting Hillel Schwartz’ columns for Dimensions, published 1997-1999. That magazine always struck me as the budget Playboy-wannabe for fat admirers, rooted in the anti-feminism that has cramped fat activism since the early days. I can’t say that I was ever much of a fan of it, but I like Schwartz’ work on fat very much and his Never Satisfied was a revelation to me when I first read it in the early 1990s. To say the author and historian is eclectic is an understatement. I am currently reading his self-published work about caring for people when they are dying. But I regard him as a founder of Fat Studies, as someone who took fat seriously as a subject when few others did …

5 mins read

How to support Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement

I am publishing a book about fat activism (edited to add, it’s out now! Get it here) that I think is original and powerful. People who have read it agree so far, you can see some of their comments on the publisher’s website. The book is due out in January, aka diet season.HammerOn Press is a small affair. There is no publicity department or generous expenses allowance. It is me and another person. We need your help in getting this book out into the world. If you’ve ever felt indebted to me, now’s your chance for payback!You don’t have to have masses of time or money, you don’t need to know loads of people, small actions make a difference. Does this need to be said? …

2 mins read

Pre-Order my book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement!

My book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is going to be published on 4 January 2016. I picked this date because it is the beginning of the new year weight loss season and the first day back to work for people who have to hustle for a living. I thought that this would be when readers would need something really encouraging about hope and social change at this bleak time of year.But then there is the holiday season and there are people out there who might want to get a copy for themselves or for those they love, or their enemies, or as a philanthropic gesture because they’ve seen A Muppet Christmas Carol and now understand the error of their ways. What about them? They can’t wait …

10 mins read

Good citizenship and fat hate cards

In 2005 I was invited to give the keynote at NOLOSE, a great honour. I said that a storm was coming and that although fat hatred was bad enough now, it was going to get a lot worse. I was talking about and getting my head around the global obesity epidemic. This is a moral panic about fat people instigated by the World Health Organisation through its 2000 report on obesity, authored by people with interests in the weight loss industry, which, unsurprisingly became the textbook for global interventions. Where fat hate had previously been a matter for people and their health practitioners, their families and random strangers in the street, it was now enshrined in policy, a major coup for the weight loss industry. What has happened in …

5 mins read

DIY Publishing and Fat Activism

When I finished my PhD someone asked me about my plans for publishing it. I said that I might publish it myself and they looked at me aghast, this would clearly have been academic suicide. A book published by an academic press would most likely be expensive and would have to conform to an idea of what an academic book is. In my experience, academic books may be full of useful knowledge but are generally very boring to read. I didn’t want to produce something that sends people to sleep. I want my writing to help people feel alive and full of possibility.Somebody else said that the thesis contained some work that would be REF-able papers. REF refers to the Research Excellence Framework, a model …

10 mins read

Archiving Fat Activism

My book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is built on research. Some of this research involved interviewing people and some involved sifting through archival material.I went to archives to look for fat activism because there are very few books and papers available that document it so I needed to look at original source material and try and piece things together. I drifted into archival work, it wasn’t part of the original plan for the research but I just kept getting pulled further in because the things I found there were very moving and exciting to see. Where I often feel isolated in my present-day fat activism, in the archive I could clearly see myself and others as part of a much bigger movement, it …

4 mins read

Five things I have learned from writing this book

I think of fat as a life’s work. Sometimes it is there strongly, very present in my life, sometimes I get burned out. But the question of what it is to be fat in cultures that hate fat people is on-going. I doubt I will ever find a definitive answer but so what, it’s the journey that matters.My book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is about to be published on 4 January 2016. It represents a period of great intensity for me, about seven years or so, maybe a bit longer, of thinking and working on fat. It’s about to have a life beyond me and the many people who have supported the project over the years; it’s about to go public.I’ve certainly learned a …

1 min read

Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement – Now Out!

My book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is published today by HammerOn Press. You can get it directly from the publisher, in bookshops, from all the usual online sellers. Paperback, hardback and EPUB formats are available.HammerOn and I decided to publish the book today because for many people it is the first miserable day back at work after the holidays. It’s the peak of New Year diet season misery, where people realise what their pledges to lose weight actually entail. We thought that readers deserved something better: a tool to help them incite revolution in an accessible way.Oh yeah, we made a video.In Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement I write about what people say about fat activism, how they’re quite limited and …

4 mins read

Fat Feminism, missing women and conversations unspoken

A little while back, my girlfriend’s neighbour got married to a man and had a clear-out of a load of lesbian feminist books from the late 1980s. She offered them to my girlfriend and said that a friend had left them. There was a great collection of about 30 books, popular genres like humour, detective fiction, romance. A real throwback to a different time, when lesbian feminist book publishing was in full swing.I’ve been stressed about getting my own book together, which has manifested as insomnia, so my girlfriend has been reading these books to me to help me nod off at night. We may be postmodern queers but Lesbian Bedside Stories 2 has given us a lot of pleasure!The other night she read a short …

5 mins read

Acknowledging the book’s supporters

It’s taken years to get Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement together and the experience has been a strange mixture of aloneness and putting things into a public realm. I did quite a lot of public speaking over its main research period, from 2008-2012, and of course there’s blogging. But the work of putting a load of complex, scattered ideas together into something coherent, which started with the thesis, is a solitary thing shared only with a few close people. Perhaps what I’m saying is that I have felt alone in holding the full picture of this research and the book in my head. Now things are changing.I have started speaking about the book in public. Last week we had its launch, and yesterday I spoke at …